Can I use 2 Apple Homepods with Roon and will it be lossless?

Can I use 2 Apple Homepods with Roon and will it be lossless?

I assume Roon would stream to them via AirPlay?

You can, but not as a stereo pair (I would be delighted if someone could show me that I am wrong about this).

The stream should be lossless.

Just stream Apple Music to them. They will work as a stereo pair and have enough DSP to make up for any lossy stream you send to them.

Cheers.

Set your 2 homepods up as a zone.

Open DSP for that zone.

Turn on PEQ and add Mute Channel on each Homepod in the zone.

Silence the right hand channel on the left Homepod and vice versa.

Voila, stereo homepods

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Well, I said through Roon. Roon does not do Apple Music.

@Mark_Valentine’s solution will do the trick.

Alternatively, from any Mac running Big Sur and Roon, you can set the default local sound output via Airplay to the HomePod pair.

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That’s brilliant! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

This does not answer the question?

What do you need to know?

There isn’t actually a question in your post.

If you are referring to the OP, then both ways of achieving stereo pairing have been explained.

If you are asking about lossless, then the current answer is no, homepods don’t support lossless unless you are running the current beta firmware.

Will Roon support lossless one the new firmware is launched, I don’t know.

I don’t normally reply to old posts, but your post caught my eye.

With the latest Apple TV 4K on iOS15.4 you can pair it to 2 HomePods in stereo. Then, if you have a TV with ARC/eARC connect this Apple TV to it. Set other inputs to use the Apple TV 4K and HomePods as the output device via the settings on the Apple TV under Audio and Video. If you have a spare Apple TV 4K (I guess any will do) plug it into another HDMI port and enable this in Roon as an AirPlay endpoint. Although output is only 44.1/16 it will give you stereo output.

Hope this makes sense.

Just thought I’d share.

You also can pair two HomePods or HomePod Minis through the Apple Home app on an iPhone/iPad or on a Mac. Then on a Mac or iPhone/iPad, set the paired HomePods or HP Minis as the System Output (Mac) or general output (iPhone/iPad). Roon will play stereo if the Mac System Output or the iPhone/iPad is selected as an output or zone using AirPlay.